Date: Unspecified
Ti: Unspecified
Location: Myriad Realms, Card World, Central Region, Central Academic City, Morningstar University District, Morningstar University Campus, Garden of Beginning
"Aa... Wyatt, what’s happening?" Lucine asked, reaching for the stake as she noticed the Evil-Sealing Thousand Curse Coffin fading with each passing second—its once-brilliant glow dimming, as though its power was being drained away.
Observing this, Lucine imdiately assud the worst. She believed that after getting what she wanted from , Slay had broken off the negotiation and was now trying to escape from the Evil-Sealing Thousand Curse Coffin. In her frustration, she blad for being foolish enough to trust a devil without securing a soul contract first. What she failed to rember was that we were inside a version of the Card World’s past—and any soul contract made here would hold no power in our present. Especially now, when the Celestial Will couldn’t access this tiline due to the stake carved from the World Calamity Tree’s twig.
"Relax—she’s one of us now," I assured Lucine, keeping my tone calm but offering no details. Yet, the doubt in her eyes and her hand hovering re inches from the massive wooden stake told she was past the point of taking my word for it.
Sighing, I added, "Don’t worry. The essence of the Curse Coffin being absorbed by her will ensure her obedience to . That’s all I can say. You understand how this works, don’t you?"
"No, I don’t. In fact, I think it would be wiser if I just pull out this stake," Lucine said, feigning ignorance as her hand inched closer to it, her eyes fixed blankly on .
"Stop playing dumb. This isn’t funny—it’s serious," I said in a low, firm tone, watching her using the stake to toy with . Even though I knew she wouldn’t actually pull it out, I still played along; the last thing I wanted was to provoke her into doing sothing reckless.
"I’m playing dumb? No, you were," she snapped back. "You made reveal classified secrets of our university and turned into a fool by acting like a naïve but genius student when you clearly are not. Aren’t you ashad to act like a helpless little card master when you clearly are a lot stronger than anyone I have t so far? And why does she keep calling a Hybrid Celestial? What does it even an? "
She was blaming now—angry that, in her attempt to impress and recruit by sharing info of her university’s hidden inheritance, she had been outplayed. Now that I had saved both our lives, she twisted it into , claiming that I tricked her into exposing what she shouldn’t have by pretending to be weak when I clearly am not.
When she put it that way, it did sound like I’d led her on. I hadn’t forced her to tell anything—but I hadn’t stopped her either. That wasn’t my fault; she should’ve known better. Still... her friend would have stopped her.
And then there was the issue of Slay addressing as a Hybrid Celestial—sothing I had no idea how to explain to Lucine.
"Hybrid Celestials are those who can conjure a celestial rule domain—like , for example," I told her, keeping my explanation vague enough to stay technically true. Then, steering the conversation away, I added, "I didn’t trick you, Lucine. You were too eager to recruit into your university. Don’t pin your mistakes on ."
"A mistake I wouldn’t have made if you’d been honest with ," she shot back, stepping away from the stake and closing the distance between us in the heat of the argunt.
"Hey, I’m just a humble card master," I said with mock innocence. "It’s not my fault that you—a card demigod—happen to be weaker than . Are you sure you’re not a fake card demigod?"
I wore an expression of genuine doubt as I spoke, and it hit her exactly as I expected. Lucine froze, her eyes narrowing into a chilling glare that silently asked if I’d really just said that.
"How dare you?" she snapped, her voice rising with fury. "I am a true card demigod! You’re a fake card master—a shaless fraud pretending to be weak when you’re clearly strong enough to stand among the greatest in our world!"
Before I could respond to her outburst, Lucine’s tone suddenly shifted. "Is that thing alright?" she asked, pointing toward what remained of the Evil-Sealing Thousand Curse Coffin—now reduced to a grotesque, ter-tall egg of hardened flesh.
"Yeah, she’s fine," I replied to her casually, my gaze drifting to the burning stake nearby. The embers had nearly consud halfway through its length. By my estimate, I had only a couple of minutes left before it was too damaged to serve as an evolutionary ingredient for my fifth transformation. Unfortunately, that wasn’t nearly enough ti for Slay to give birth to her new body.
Yes, I knew that by having her conceive her new body here in this past, I was taking a risk of it breaking the ti rule taboo and being punished by the ti rule when in our present. But that risk only applied if the newborn drew nourishnt from her current body, which was tainted by this tiline.
Slay’s new body, however, was being nourished by the ruler-rank Thousand Twenty-Four Curses and primordial energy. There was no danger of temporal contamination. In fact, this thod not only strengthened her body’s resistance to curses but also allowed her to use the primordial energy to form a pure, stable vessel, free from the usual hidden defects caused by her selective breeding—where she tried to inherit traits and talents from countless mates.
This approach made her evolution both efficient and safe; her new body would be stable enough not to collapse from the conflict of incompatible physiques, traits, and abilities by having them undergo fusion with the help of primordial energy to beco the best of the two worlds.
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